writings - carlyn yandle

QR button blanket: Epic fail or a larger reading?

3/21/2014

After three months of sewing one donated button after another into a giant QR code, the big moment arrived this week: time to stand back and scan that baby with a reader app, translating this quilt-thing to read, "The devil is in the details."

Except it didn't read. Don't panic!, I thought, then spent the entire next day working with a photo image of the QR Button Blanket, Photoshopping in more buttons and darker buttons and bigger buttons, trying to add the minimum amount of density for the software program to register the pattern and work its magic to produce the punchline. No luck; even a sliver of white in one button cluster puts a wrench in the wholecloth works. I filed this one under the category of Epic Fail, not worth finishing it as intended, framing it in black bias binding. I do not want to create something that is 'still' good; I want the thing to be good, full stop.

Failure demands confronting the why. Why conceive such a laborious, risky project in the first place? Why endure the painstaking process when half-way through it was becoming abundantly clear that this was not going to 'read'?

But there is another power here, and that's tied to the process beyond the product. The achievement may lie in the endurance (in an increasingly A.D.D. world) that is not necessarily attached to the product after all. It may be in seeing it through, without the promise of a sure result. The power may lie in the humble, everyday materials and the community of women who contributed all those bits of plastic saved from the waste stream. (There should really be a global ban on production of billions of plastic buttons. Plant-based plastic, bone, wood, and leather- or fabric-wrapped tin buttons eventually return to the earth.)

But what's really starting to click in for me is the cultural reference of this button-grid design. A decade ago, it might have been viewed as an oddly arranged colour field or an abstracted grid but we're so acclimatized to codes that the pattern begs to be 'read.' The fact that this is irresolvable might be annoying. And that's interesting.

Wavy Gravy, marker on synthetic velvet, 58" x 43"

The possible multiple references could be more engaging than the one answer provided by a QR reader app. There's something to be learned in the discomfort of the open-endedness.

Moments like these, I seek out the artists who have embraced what New York artist Polly Apfelbaum calls the 'tough beauty' of visually exciting works that incorporate everyday materials in surprising ways. Apfelbaum, who calls herself a bad crafter, articulates the process of hard work in this video.

"I work all the time," she says, without a schedule and in a highly experimental way. "You make the work and then you hope for the best."

"It's very important to get your fuck-you back."

I'm going with that.

Duct-taping a torso just the ticket

2/21/2014

Everything I need to know I learn on blogs, at least when it comes to making stuff.

Most recently, I needed to display a knitted artwork for an upcoming show this weekend but I did not want a big ol' plastic men's torso crowding up my studio so I googled 'how to make a mannequin.'

Up popped yet another fresh and earnest blog, posted by another fresh and earnest maker. And naturally not only has she posted sequential how-to photos but does the right thing by citing the blog that originally inspired her, which happened to be the Burda patterns website in German and which she re-capped so readers aren't lost in translation. Nobody gets anything out of this deal but a little personal maker pride and a good feeling that they're sharing the love with everyone else who loves doing stuff with our hands.

I appreciate the loosey-goosey instructions that are mostly communicated in pictures, requiring innovating as I go.

And so I did learn how to make a mannequin, and it was good.

In fact, it was a damn fun Saturday afternoon activity, and it worked out just fine.
Step 1: Find a victim of the size you need.
Step 2: Put him/her in an unwanted T-shirt (it will be sacrificed for the cause).
Step 3: Wrap some plastic wrap around the neck and at the bottom edge of the torso.
Step 4: Completely wrap the torso in duct tape. One of you will get dizzy from turning.
Step 5: Cut the T-shirt/tape shell off up the back.
Step 6: Remove from victim and tape the back edges together, then tape across the neck and the armholes.
Step 7: Stuff it with cushion foam chips.
Step 8: Stick the torso on some sort of stand (floor lamp base, dowel in chunk of wood, what-have-you. (I weighted a metal stand I had lying around with a 10kg barbell plate.)
Step 9: (I added this one) Sew up a fitted black microfiber casing.
Step 10: Staple the bottom together and dress (you and the mannequin).

The best part is that once the show's over, I can de-stuff the torso, lose the base and fold away the mannequin shell for future exhibits.

Just doing my tiny part in the hive full of maker bees.

Something potent in unapproved public art

2/7/2014

It's official: the Dude Chilling Park sign, a guerrilla-art installation by recent Emily Carr industrial design grad Viktor Briestensky, has been reinstated, with full approval by the city's parks board.

Something was gained, but something was lost in there too.

It's not about the loss of the official park name. All you local monarchists can breathe a sigh of relief; there's no report of any move to officially rename the park itself (named in 1972 after the bordering street which was named after Queen VIctoria's German rellies.)

It's encouraging that the City listened to the community on this, especially recognizing that Dude Chilling Park is a better locator for all of us who use this rare bit of green space in Mount Pleasant. That would mostly be the dog people who have been referring to this meeting spot by some version of that name since the public art piece of the tubular reclining dude by Denman Island artist Michael Dennis was installed there back in 1991 when the area was still pretty sketchy.

So, yeah, it's kind of fun to have that sign back — it even made a line for the Jimmy Kimmel show — but it's lost its original spontaneous, anti-authoriarian potency.

Katherine Nielsen and Jennifer Skillen play with the numbers (Carlyn Yandle photo)

The wonder remains for the presumably guerrilla-art installation of the third zero to the monolithic '100' statue at the south foot of the Granville Island bridge that suddenly appeared then disappeared in 2008.

The clever appropriation of the existing untitled structure, its meaning and apparent materials speaks of the appropriation of this land. I loved that the extra zero had all the cold, inhumane appearance of the existing cast concrete but was knocked off in painted rigid foam. If art is about afflicting the comfortable, creating some community dialogue or shaking up public preconceptions, this was working.

I've searched for any information on what genius did it (and how it was installed) and the circumstances for its sudden disappearance. Was it completely unsanctioned, or part of a past public art biennale?

Both the Dude Chilling Park sign and the third zero are beautifully crafted urban landscape interventions but it's the one that was mysteriously removed that keeps me thinking about our social history.

Designs on the halter dress-tool belt combo

1/30/2014

The denim Dakota, from hedleyandbennett.com

Most people will admit that their everyday clothes are a sort of uniform. We need to keep it pretty simple because we're likely dressing in the dim of the still-dark morning when we'd rather spend those extra minutes sleeping.

My own uniform is basically a T-shirt, tights and boots under what I view as a Western-secular abaya — a wrap sweater, long hoodie or whatever else is lying around — and a raincoat. Just this side of 'not crazy' and pretty functional for weekdays at the studio.

It's taken some trial and error to figure out how to adapt this bike-friendly getup to a day of painting or carving or casting or sewing, climbing up and down ladders or working on the floor. I need a combo toolbelt and day dress, something I can switch out with the sweater-abaya thingy.

These designs take time. You need to walk a mile in a maker's apron to figure out how it needs to function. That's what former culinary school grad Ellen Bennett did. As a cook she saw the need that led to her own L.A.-based online business, Hedley and Bennett. I'm inspired, and denim is definitely the way to go. The tool pockets are essential but the backless style doesn't work over tights. I need me a work dress.

Back in the day, women had housework dresses, but they were a little too light duty. Sewing one up in denim would basically create a lab coat, and I hate to be encumbered by sleeves. I'm thinking more halter dress than coat.

Back to the drawing board. I need big front and side pocket-compartments for the brushes, Xacto knife, painting rags, latex gloves, hair clip, micro computer/stereo system and some sort of accommodation for earbuds to enable hands-free operation of said iPhone. I was following my instincts, obeying my gut, but this was all starting to sound a little familiar. I was conjuring up the maximum-convenience garment version of The Homer.

Like all enduring design, function trumps form, and it takes a lot of mulling to simplify that form. I separated the 'must haves' from the 'nice to haves' and finally settled on sewing up a durable grey denim wrap dress, for ease of movement, with right-side tool/communication pockets.

My beta version is now encrusted with more than a year's worth of paint and gesso so it's a good time to roll out Work Dress 2.0. I still like the wrap design but I can see the top section should pull over the head apron-style so I can use that upper front real-estate for slim pockets for the pointy tools that don't sit pretty in side pockets when I'm sitting. Oh yes, and it needs to be made out of old jeans, pockets and all.

I may be taking orders for the Work Dress by next year, or not taking any orders on what is appropriate daywear.

The beta version of the workers' wrap dress.

Earbuds buttonhole above the side back pocket: check.

Innovation can be a risky business

1/16/2014

Coming up with new ideas is not without its hazards. The world-renowned Noma restaurant is a case in point. Chef-patron Rene Redzepi uses what grows in the area, innovating astounding food creations famously foraged from the local land and sea. Sometimes the magic works; sometimes it doesn't. He's even admitted to his own spontaneous bowel reactions to his experiments.

Mountains of Christmas lights headed for the grinder in Shijiao, China (Atlantic Magazine)

One outfit in the southern Chinese town of Shijiao has innovated a low-tech method for squeezing a livelihood out of the great bulk of broken Christmas lights. Making use of the empty shipping containers returning to the global export hub and North Americans' addiction to buying cheap throwaways, the strings are thrown into a grinder, then shovelled into a water bath that separates the heavier metal wire fragments from the plastic insulator bits. The metals are eventually separated into reusable copper and other metals, and the plastic is used in slipper soles. (Check out the fascinating video.)

Granted, there are problems, like the possibility of lead in the plastic that ends up cozying up to the soles of feet and the spewing pollution from copper processing.

That necessity to make a living is one mother of invention, a prime example of the hard birth of a global leader in innovation.

Baled copper. Carlyn Yandle photo

Considering the glut of stuff and our continued rampant consumerism, it's becoming unconscionable to me to use materials that are not either post-market or readily re-usable. That's easy to face down in the making of sculptural objects. I find inspiration through foraging in my own environment, where culturally-weighty artifacts from spider-webby doilies to crushed copper play with concept.

But I'm stymied when it comes to painting. I love the exploration but can't stand the materials. I rely on petroleum-based paints and resins, first-use softwood stretchers, brushes and canvasses. Acrylic paints allow me to do the layering I can't achieve in oils, creating that fine line between the handmade and digital.

Untitled, 2013, Distract series, acrylic on canvas, 24" x 30" on panel.

I feel it all coming to a head: Am I willing to lay down the paintbrush to reduce my own carbon footprint? Not quite.

But I am taking a few baby steps. I've been experimenting with composing larger paintings out of my painting studies, to incorporate the patterns of both the painted surface and the piecing, not unlike a quilt made up of well-chosen materials that have outlived their original purpose.

It may just be that necessity to reduce my consumption that pushes me into innovating in painting. Like other innovations, there will be failures and disasters. Somewhere in there is a new way to approach painting.

Making merry makes the maker

12/20/2013

The Crassmas season is one big distraction to me. But once I remind myself that a gift does not have to be a solution to someone's problem but a simple, seasonal gesture, I embrace the chance to make, and make it merry.

The place is a happy mess. Wool strands are stuck to my glue gun nozzle, my slippers are splattered with spraypaint. Black plugs of leather from my new punch tool are lodged in my laptop keyboard and tiny glass beads have rolled into every corner of the apartment.

There is some method in all this mad, frivolous playing and decorating, but I only see the playing with ideas after the fact.

Turns out my spontaneously created (ie. still in pajamas) 'copper pipe' wreath (sliced wrapping paper rolls and copper spraypaint) was a practical exercise in understanding patterns of circles within circles — the focus of a major project next year.

Glass-bead snowflakes, a dark-weeknight distraction, was a lesson in math ( a five-inch-diameter object requires a five-foot strand of beaded wire) and an experiment in creating area and density from line.

Crocheting chunky-wool slipper booties had its own lesson in scale; in this case, what looks cute in a kiddie size looks hideous in an adult version. (Breathe easy, teenagers.)

The gingerbread A-frame cabins involved more industrial design than I anticipated and more geometry than I normally like to endure but was essential for gaining the most area out of four cookie-sheet squares of dough. The possibility that math can be fun is matched by my new-found fascination of some basic chemistry that reveals the power of heat to turn granular sugar into glass, and the power of water as the only solution for pots cemented with rock-hard sugar syrup.

I can't rationalize the pounds of candy and icing sugar I bought for the four kids to decorate the gingerbread camp. That I would ever indulge in that sort of seasonal folly is a freakin' Christmas miracle.

true craftsman makes a crazy idea real

12/13/2013

While the rest of us are scrambling to post our recent activity, build our brand, be a part of the online conversation, Noah is solving problems through metal. His underwhelming website is testimony to what he does instead all day long instead of sitting at a computer, often seven days a week, for money and for love.

I found him through a trusted recommendation and knocked on his hand-crafted metal-ball door-knocker back in May, with my metal problem: I wanted to make a quilt out of reclaimed copper piping and other old gizmos. I had my pitch all ready to go, something along the lines of, "I know this sounds crazy but hear me out..." but I could see he was already loving the idea.

"I really want to do it," he said, and I could see I had found the right craftsman for the job.

For the next four months, Noah turned my full-size paper pattern pieces into two mirror-image, six-foot-square quilts of 10 lapping 'log cabin' blocks, which was installed in the front entrance of the City of North Vancouver's new Operations Centre last night, at the time of this posting.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss. I didn't even know what brazing was when assemblage artist (and Noah's neighbour) Valerie Arntzen brought me around to his place. I didn't know that you can't just solder different metals together. I simply handed over the goodies I found at my favourite scrap yards (thank you for putting those gems aside, Richard of North Star Recycling and Dung of Allied Salvage). Apart from some initial head-scratching and smiling, Noah did not harp on the fact these were time-consuming challenges. Had I known the trouble he would take dissembling old spigots and repairing bronze pressure gauges I might have clawed back on the scrappy treasures.

It also had not dawned on me that paper patterns might not be suitable in a workplace that is all fire and molten metal, a problem he solved by laying a thick piece of tempered glass between the patterns and the hot solder and copper. Problem-solving is the mark of fine craftsmanship.

Noah claimed to like the quilter's block-by-block approach to creating complex pattern and texture. I appreciated the fact that he also saw visual value of keeping the soldering drips and the entire range of patinas of copper, from black to turquoise to new-penny pink, instead of polishing it all to a high sheen. That ability to let go of the need to create a perfect joint or a uniform result speaks to the artist in this craftsman.

The nuts and bolts: Hand-drawn renderings were translated into an Illustrator file and printed out as full-size colour-coded block patterns to indicate three levels as well as placements for found features. Noah adjusted for the bulky tees and elbows as he transformed the patterns into a three-dimensional matrix, and situated specific gizmos to enhance the subtle mirror-image effect.

There are many leaps of faith in the making of something never before attempted. No amount of sketching, Photoshop'd artist renderings or 3-D modelling can create the same sense of the actual thing in its intended space. So as City of North Vancouver workers passed by during the installation last night, joking about how it looked like their last job, or asking if we've checked for leaks, or pointing out some gizmo-relic they remember (including some donated from the City's own works yard), we were having our own first look at our collaborated effort. The glints of hand-rubbed corners and the deep shadows on the wall were all pulling together in this soaring, 12-foot-high structure.

And... breathe out. Waterwork is working. Thank you, Noah.

Just a bad craft? Time and techonology will tell

11/29/2013

I'm posting this picture because if I don't do it now I might cram this doomed project into a green garbage bag and stuff it where the sun don't shine: in deep storage.

I've seen through some fraught, laborious projects in my time but I may have met my match. After months of hoarding buttons and hounding others to surrender their button jars "for art's sake" I'm thisclose to admitting this thing is a colossal waste of time.

The plan was to create a companion piece to my QR Quilt: After Douglas Coupland, a scrappy quilt translation of the artist's QR Code Paintings.

This new one will be a 'whole-cloth' quilt, where only the buttons would bind the layers. And of course it will be readable with a QR code reader app. Trouble is, since I designed this coded button blanket last year I'm starting to think that QR codes are a fleeting technology, like the fax machine. The geeky chatter on the interwebs also tells me so . So, in a few years when the industrial marketing complex has made the stampede over to some other state-of-the-art attention-grabbing software schtick, the whole point of this project will be rendered obsolete. How did I not see the futility of trying to grapple with fleeting technology through a painstakingly slow craft method?

The inner negator has been bullying me throughout week one of sewing one found button after another onto my marked grid. It's not helpful realizing that in the unlikely event that I have selected the correct colours to read black, and have sewn in enough button-density to create a readable pattern, I'm still left with an unwashable, lead-apron-heavy quilt. I can't even dedicate it as a shroud in my final wish for a sustainable green burial, as my corpse would be cocooned in all that non-biodegradable plastic poundage.

This is normally the time when I call for reinforcements in the form of artist friends, who will invoke the usual mantra: 'Trust the process, trust the process.'

I get it and I'm going with it. See it through. One button at a time, one day at a time. The week-one picture is posted. There's no pretending it's all still just a concept. This matter of time, technology and endurance matters.

Discarded doilies demand attention

8/9/2013

Wrap (I), polyethylene fibre, 96" diameter

In my fourth-year sculpture class venerable artist and (now newly-retired) Emily Carr instructor Liz Magor took one look at my first installation of a kazillion doilies stretched across the cavernous classroom and said, "You seem to be in love with doilies. Maybe it's time to break up and find something else to love."

It was just the kind of motivation I needed to embark on a three-year challenge to bring the thrift-shop throwaways into the gallery fore.

Wrap (II), polyethylene fibre, 96" diameter

I admit I am in love with spidery, handmade doilies. My hands barely know the work that goes into their tiny filigree patterns. Following a complex pattern is a highly meditative exercise in concentration, patience and commitment. Their circular designs reflect the mathematical patterns of coral, brain, bibb lettuce.

But the real power of those little doilies for me is their symbolism. Each one represents its maker, invariably an older woman who has clearly worked this way with her hands for many, many years, who probably learned from her mother, who learned from her mother. When I spot them in heaps in a plastic basket on a thrift store shelf, 50 cents each, I am quietly horrified. How can all these humble labours of love, these overlooked objects of household protection, be reduced to almost no value? And am I still talking about the handmade items or their makers? I've been tangling up the two for a long time — for too long, some might say.

Flo (I), acrylic on canvas, 60" x 60"

For three years I've been pushing the doily into new dimensions, trying to make the invisible visible. Mixing them up with industrial materials like mortar and Tyvek. Using patterns from the back of 1950s Ladies Home Journals to turn eight-inch-wide doilies into eight-foot-wide doilies. Messing with the macho painting conventions of Abstract Expressionism from the same era.

The show went up at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre lobby last week. I don't know what the concert-ticket-holders will think of giant doilies hanging from railings, the small sculptures of unfathomable petrified doilies or painted fields of doily patterns, with names like Flo (after my grandmother with skilled hands and a bold spirit) and Persistent Grey.

Ravages (I), found cotton doilies, mortar, dimensions variable

I'm sort of resigned to the idea that many will find it all weirdly decorative. Maybe Magor would say that now I really need to find another object to love. But for me it's a mission accomplished. I've somehow managed to fool everyone with the promise of Art and filled the pristine, privileged gallery space with doilies.

Is my love affair over? I'm trying not to think about it too much. Over-thinking has never helped me.

Unlaced continues at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre until Sept. 23, 2013. Gallery Hours: during QET performances or by appointment. Contact: Connie Sabo, gallery curator, 604-505-4297

Put down that Blackberry and go get some blackberries

8/1/2013

I so adore this old World War I royalty-free poster created for the Canada Food Board that I post it in my kitchen every year during the putting-food-by months, already underway.

I love the displayed array of fresh produce that would never be pushed by a private enterprise (where's the profit margins in stuff you can grow?) and the chief goals of saving and not wasting. So anti-capitalist. There's nary a scrap of the patriarchy in this national call to action. You want to live well? Listen to what your grandmother's got to say, girl, and you'll be wanting not.

It's propaganda art you can really sink your teeth into.

There's an art to putting food by without relying on electricity, and an art to harvesting what's wilding in your environment, also known as foraging. We do it with intention (in jeans and long-sleeved shirts, with hook, snips, and yogurt containers) or without intention (leaning one's barely clad beach-bound body into the thicket for a few juicy morsels).

We are not wanting for blackberries in this corner of the world, to put by, or put in a pie — and not just for the fruit. In what should become an extension of this very Vancouver (and Vancouver Island) activity, the ubiquitous rogue species of Himalayan blackberry can be harvested for their durable 'vegetable leather.'

David Gowman photo from The Georgia Straight, straight.com

The time of this writing is the perfect time to reap a particular harvest, according to local artist
Sharon Kallis. It's late enough in the growing season for the canes to reach the thickness of a baby's arm and shoot 10 feet in the air in search for cyclists to take down or paths to take over. But it's not so late in the season that the menacing-looking vines are too woody to be able to be stripped. That hits around mid-August.

Why would want to strip the canes? It's a rhetorical question for anyone who likes to make something out of nothing, and this is even better: make stuff, while hacking into this invasive species' ability to turn diverse urban woodlands into a thorny monocrop.

Kallis, whose special interest is in social engagement, shows how to strip blackberry vines (or watch this video) to wrestle down this barbed invader and amass some very usable material that can be used immediately or stored for later to make useful things like baskets or privacy screens, and useless, more interesting things like installations. Some inspiration from the prolific American sculptor Patrick Dougherty:

Crossing Over, American Craft Museum, New York, New York, 1996.

Dougherty installing at the North Carolina Museaum of Art, 2009.

Summer Palace, 2009. Morris Arboretum, Philadelphia.